Bloody Acquisitions (Fred Book 3) (6 page)

Then she was gone—well, from the alley at least—but her words lingered long after her, even as I looked up the number for Charlotte Manor and finally called my friends. People were telling stories about me? And not only that, they were getting all the details screwed up. My stomach twisted into a bundle of nerves, though I was technically out of harm’s way, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why.

After several years as a vampire, I was finally beginning to get a sense of when there was trouble on the horizon.

7.

“Well, the bad news is that your car is going to need some serious work. It looks like Colin punched out a window and shot the engine when you ran off, which isn’t surprising given the rage issues. Good news is that Bubba knows more than a few trustworthy mechanics, and the Agency is going to create an accident report where you aren’t at fault for your insurance company.” Krystal walked into the room, classically decorated and far from her style, not even pausing to kick off her boots before she dropped into bed next to me.

It hadn’t taken long after the call for Krystal to show up, along with Bubba, Richard, and Amy all packed into her truck. Arch drove his own car—a surprisingly well-maintained Cadillac that was easily older than anyone other than its driver. They’d managed to arrive quickly, but not quite before Colin had woken up screaming. As it turned out, my insane theory had actually panned out, and Colin had been putting silver in his bloodstream. Amy assured me that, with vampire blood in his system, he’d make a full recovery, but the next few hours would be tough. Not even she could lessen the pain, however, since silver would work against her magic as well.

After that, things sort of became a blur. Arch took Colin into custody, shoving him in the back of the Cadillac after cuffing him; though, with how much pain the hunter was in, the cuffs might have been unnecessary. The rest of the harpoon was yanked out of me, and I was brought back to Charlotte Manor, where Albert, Neil, and Sally were all waiting. Charlotte slipped a glass of wine into my hand the moment I entered, and I said a silent prayer of thanks for the hospitality of the possessed house. The rest of the gang went to my apartment, apparently sweeping it for traps, of which they found a few, and getting my car towed out of the street.

I don’t know how much time passed before Krystal returned, giving me a packet of blood from my fridge—silver free, she assured me—and escorting me up to her new room. There hadn’t even been time to unpack yet, so it felt oddly foreign. Part of me wished for the familiarity of my own home, or even Krystal’s old apartment, but that sentiment faded as soon as I remembered that I was probably in the safest spot in all of Winslow. Once that hit home, I sucked down my blood and simply took the news as it rolled in. The car was the latest bit, the last of the truly pragmatic stuff, and as Krystal sank deeper into the cushy mattress, I turned over to meet her gaze.

“What’s going to happen to Colin?”

“Depends on Colin,” Krystal said. “From what we’ve been able to dig up so far, the guy lost his family to a vampire attack a few weeks back. Watched everyone die, but managed to drive a silver knife into the head of his attacker when it was his turn to go. His prints matched the ones at a scene we’d been trying to figure out for a while. Anyway, seeing that kind of shit will drive most people off the edge, and he’s no exception.”

She reached over, gently touching the part of my shoulder where the harpoon had burst through. There was no scar to mark it; in fact, if not for the torn shirt and sweater vest, it would have been impossible to tell that anything had ever happened.

“He’s not bad, though. Got a natural talent for this sort of stuff. Never seen someone try to
carpoon
a vampire before.”

“How long you been waiting to use that?” I asked.

“Hours. Had to make sure you were okay first, or it would have been in bad taste.” She grinned, but we’d been together long enough that I could see the worry behind her smile. I’d been in trouble tonight, and she wasn’t there to protect me. I imagined that was a hard pill to swallow, especially for an agent.

“Anyway, if Colin can be reformed, taught to understand that not all parahumans are bad, then maybe he could work off some of his time with the Agency. If he can’t, then the cops are going to easily locate the dude who shot up a gas station, carjacked a taxi, and I’m sure pulled off a lot of other illegal stuff on other nights.”

“What if he tells people about vampires?” I asked.

“Let him. He’s not the first, and he won’t be the last. Prisons have psych wards too these days.” Krystal let go of my shoulder, wrapped her hand around my torso, and tapped me gently on the back. “Have to put him in a good one though. He’s crafty. Did you know there was a GPS tracker on your back? Stuck right into your sweater vest.”

My mind drifted back to when I was first running away, after the silver bullet failed to stop me. I remembered those next few shots. Loud, but not nearly as powerful. I’d taken them to be normal bullets at the time, but a small tracker made a lot more sense.

“Guess that’s one mystery solved. I was wondering how he kept finding me.” On the subject of being found, my brain lit up with a sudden rush of forgotten concern. “Oh crap, Dr. Huerta, is he okay?”

“He’s alive, and Amy is already talking with a few other local mages to get him fixed all the way up. They can even take away the memory, along with the rest of today, but so far he’s been refusing it. Also . . . I think Dr. Huerta is done with the blood trade,” Krystal said.

“Yeah. I sort of expected as much.” A white business card was suddenly a few inches from my nose, clutched in Krystal’s slender fingers. “What’s this?”

“You’re not the only vampire that prefers take-out. The Agency set up vendors centuries ago, ones who only buy blood at a fair rate. I never mentioned it, since they’re a bit pricier than what your guy was charging, but it seems pretty relevant as things stand. And they have a speedy delivery option.” She shook the card in front of me several more times, until I finally reached up and pulled it from her hand.

“They’re Agency-approved?”

“It’s better to say we keep an eye on them, and they know it,” Krystal replied. “They probably fudge a lot of paperwork here and there, but they’re smart enough not to try any big stuff. That one has a particularly good reputation. I asked around, in case it ever came up.”

“Thank you.” I slipped the card into my wallet, making a note to call them tomorrow. After I’d gotten a new phone. Much as I appreciated the assistance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to use a device that someone else had had such recent access to. It seemed senselessly dangerous. I put the wallet away and pulled out the phone, prompting a bit of throat-clearing from Krystal.

“So . . . about the vampire who helped you.”

“Lillian,” I said. “She said she was here for a meeting with the therians. I assume that means Richard.”

“Right. Well, we ran it down, and that part is mostly true. She’s part of a vampire clan that’s petitioning to meet with Richard. They want to move into town, but since Winslow is home to a lot of powerful therians, their badass leader, and the King of the West, coming in without at least an introduction would be a dicey proposal.”

“Let me guess, I only got away with it because I never hunted and kept my head down?”

“More or less,” Krystal said. “These things matter more with people who make a lot of waves, of which you are not one. Plus, you’re just one vampire. If therians see a whole clan suddenly appear without warning, they’re likely to think that the vampires are up to something. Maybe even an invasion to wrest control of the city. They tend to deal with those threats fast and hard.”

“Sort of encouraging that they want to go through proper channels, then,” I told her.

“We’ll see what we see.” Krystal shrugged, as if we were talking about whether our pizza would come with the proper toppings. It was hard to blame Krystal, though. While it seemed like a very dangerous situation to me, for her it likely wasn’t even a blip on the radar. I never dug too deep into what it was to be an agent, but the few glimpses I’d seen had left me with an appreciation for the scope of their duties, and their abilities.

“Lillian said there was another reason they wanted to talk with Richard.” I spoke carefully, not quite sure how best to broach this subject. In truth, I was still wrapping my own head around it, trying to convince myself that there was something I’d misunderstood. “She said they’d heard tales about a vampire who lived here. One who was on good terms with the therians, and dating an agent. Who was even not hated by the King of the West. I’m . . . I’m not crazy, am I? They’re talking about me.”

She looked at me for a long moment, then leaned in and kissed me gently on the forehead. “Yes and no, Freddy. Yes, parahumans love to talk—actually, who I am kidding, they love to
gossip
. But you know how those things go. Someone tells the story of catching a big fish, they leave out the hours of failure and trying different baits before the final success and cut right to the triumph. People chop the stories down to the interesting bits, pulling out the context. And without that context, some of the friendships you’ve made and things you’ve accomplished can seem almost inexplicable. So yes, the stories are about you in the sense that you have done those things, but no, they’re not about the Freddy that we all know and love. Did she even realize you were the one she wanted to meet?”

“Not in the slightest,” I replied. “In fact, she said someone like me could learn a lot from a vampire like that.”

“See, there you go. A few rumors flying around, but nothing to worry about. Kind of fun, in a way.” She reached up and poked my glasses, an affectation of familiarity and comfort rather than necessity. “You’re your own Clark Kent.”

“Except that my Superman is made up of gossip and mis-told stories,” I pointed out.

“And you don’t have the cape,” Krystal added.

“Whew, so you didn’t search my closet that carefully.” It was a joke, but Krystal’s smile faded a bit.

“About that, Freddy. You can’t go home for a few days,” she said. “Amy and I found more than a couple of booby traps in your apartment. Now, we’re both good, but given how resourceful Colin was, we decided it was safer to get the whole place professionally swept. Not to mention, anything we find might help us figure out who else Colin has attacked. Anyway, the long and short of it is that, for the next few days, your place is a crime scene.”

“That’s more than a little inconvenient.” I flipped back over, looking at the wallpapered ceiling. “At least I can get a room from Charlotte.”

“Ooooooor . . .” Krystal drew out the word as she laid her head on my shoulder, the one not stained with blood. “We could take a vacation. Sort of. Arch needs to borrow Albert and Neil for something, but I’ve got vacation time saved up. What do you say we tag along? Get out of town for a little bit, let everything get settled.”

“I have a sneaking suspicion that this ‘vacation’ will just end with more peril, if Arch is taking Neil and Albert somewhere,” I told her.

“It’s not like that. This is networking. Arch thinks they’d do well to meet someone else who wields a weapon of destiny. No crimes need solving, no monsters need slaying. And if they did, the sheriff is more than capable of handling it.”

“That’s reassure—wait, sheriff? Where, exactly, are we going?”

Krystal looked up at me, a mischievous twinkle in her eye that I knew all too well meant things were about to get chaotic. “I’m going to take that as a ‘yes.’”

A Sheriff in the Country
1.

The plane bounced a bit too enthusiastically upon landing and I reflexively grabbed Krystal’s hand. While I am nervous about many things, flying isn’t one of them. At least, normal flying isn’t. The tiny little mechanism we sat in, supported only by a set of twin propellers, had proven to be a different story, though. I’d thought it would be quaint when I first laid eyes on it, something a little more classic than the monstrous jets that carry people around like cattle. What I didn’t realize is that having a jet that big lessens the impact of turbulence, whereas in the small plane that brought me, Krystal, Arch, Albert, and Neil across the country, one could feel every single bump of turbulence along the way.

And there was a
lot
of turbulence between northern Colorado and east Texas. By the time the doors finally opened, showing me the beautiful freedom of a starlit night above, I nearly ripped my seatbelt in half vaulting out. Even if the sun had been shining, I might still have chanced it, preferring to burn to death in its deadly rays than risk another minute in those cramped, shaking quarters.

“Yeah, that’s how most people react the first time they take this flight,” Krystal noted, taking a much more sedate pace down the airplane’s steep stairs, duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Albert was only a few steps behind, clad in his usual t-shirt and jeans, stringy hair pulled back tight. If not for the blade and gold hilt of a sword strapped to his back, there would be nothing to mark the passage of time since he first came to work for me. He was taking his time in the descent, helping Neil along. Of us all, the young mage was the only one without undead constitution or years of practice taking similar flights. He staggered down the stairs, still looking green in the face despite filling up no less than three “sanitation” bags during the flight. Though the two of us were rarely on good terms, my heart went out to him. If vampires could vomit, I almost certainly would have matched his record.